Abstract:
Since 1988 the WHO Collaborating Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) has been maintaining an Emergency Events Database - EM-DAT. EM-DAT was created with the initial support of the WHO and the Belgian Government. EM-DAT is supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA).

The main objective of the database ... is to serve the purposes of humanitarian action at national and international levels. It is an initiative aimed to rationalise decision making for disaster preparedness, as well as providing an objective base for vulnerability assessment and priority setting. For example, it allows on to decide whether floods in a given country are more significant in terms of its human impact than earthquakes or whether a country is more vulnerable than another for computing resources is.

EMDAT contains essential core data on the occurrence and effects of over 12,000 mass disasters in the world from 1900 to present. The database is compiled from various sources, including UN agencies, non-governmental organisations, insurance companies, research institutes and press agencies. The database includes disaster information for countries and regions classified by disaster type including natural, technological and conflict disasters. Types of information include estimated damage, number of person killed or injured, persons displaced or affected, location, geospatial coordinates and scale.